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 y dad
was a great one for insisting that
his kids work. He didn't want us to be too idle, so he'd bring us into the shop. I don't recall what most of the
other kids did, but I worked a lot in the shop. To me it was fun. I was interested in how things operated and how
to do things. I worked mostly in the wagon shop where they rebuilt wagon wheels. This involved taking the steel
rim off of the wooden rim. At the time they came in, most of the rims were loose, so you could knock them off real
easy, and the wooden rim would come off, too. Many times the spokes had to be repaired.
I think I became quite adept at rebuilding the wheels and I enjoyed that.
They had a process in the shop where you'd heat the rim hot enough so that the metal would shrink to fit. There was a
way of measuring to make sure the size was right. We'd get all the rims which had accumulated from two or three
wagons and mark them for the wheels. There was a large enclosure, which was actually made out of a steam engine wheel,
where we built a big wood fire out of kindling and got it real hot. The steel rims were marked with a chisel to
correspond with marks on the wood rim. The steel rims were then put into the fire which caused them to expand to
fit over the wood rim. After they were placed over the wood rim by hammering them into place with a sledge hammer,
they were then dunked into water to shrink the outer rim solidly into place. That was quite a procedure. You had
to do it quick because they'd be hot and they could burn the wood; so you'd quickly douse them in water and the
steel rim would shrink and be on there permanently. I had fun doing that.
Another thing that I worked on was grinding the plow lays. The lay is
the point that goes into the ground and turns the earth. They would wear down and my dad would weld new points on
them. Acetylene welding was just coming in then, but he didn't use that. He used forge welding. Dad
would shape a point out of some other piece of metal and weld it on in the forge.
This was something that took a lot of skill because it was difficult.
You had to use what they called a "flux" which was mostly sand. That was put on in order to make a union. They put
this sand on the hot metal and it would stick when you touched the metals together, then you'd pound it and it would
become one piece. This was also done for cultivator shovels that they used to cultivate the corn. Cultivators
usually had four or eight shovels on them, and the shovels would wear down, so we'd weld new points on those. We
had a big grinding wheel that we used. At that time places that manufactured things had a central power source
instead of individually powered tools like today. They used a big motor in the back of the shop and there was a
shaft that ran the length of the shop with pulleys on it. Each appliance, such as the trip hammer, or the grinding
wheel, or the drill were all run off this shaft.
My job was to grind the plow lay or cultivator shovel to a sharp point and
then polish the lay or shovel so that the earth would not stick to it when damp or wet. (Plow share is another term for
the plow lay or point.) The grinding wheel and polishing wheels had no guard on them, and I had no protection for my
eyes. It is a wonder that I was not blinded or killed by flying metal.
I enjoyed this work because it gave me such a good feeling of
accomplishment. The lays and shovels had a chorme-like finish that was pleasing to the eye.
Another process in the shop was used to sharpen disks. A lot of
people then were turning over virgin ground that had very heavy sod. They had to disk the ground that was turned over
in order to chop it up. These disks were round and were dragged over the soil to cut up the heavy sod. To sharpen
the disks, we put them in a lathe type arrangement and used a lathe cutter to sharpen them. Each blade was individually
sharpened. The cutter blade was held on a pair of long handles that was braced against a bar so that the force would
be against the machine. It's hard to describe. That was an interesting process that I liked to work on, but I
didn't do much of that myself.
The shop was located right next to our house. Those were bootleg days
so Dad kept a bottle of liquor in the basement of the house. About four o'clock in the afternoon he'd start nipping and
by dinner time at six o'clock, he was sailing pretty good -- and a little bit mean and hard to get along with. But that's
another story.
There was a lady bootlegger in town which is where my dad got his
liquor. She made some of her own and imported quite a bit of it from Wisconsin. It was like a vodka, a clear, strong
alcohol. They would always dilute it with something. Some used pop; my dad used sugar water. Everybody knew who this
lady was, and the county sheriff would come in and raid her once in awhile. She kept the mash behind the stove in the
kitchen. When the sheriff would come, she'd throw a bunch of flour on top of the mash, and it would look like she
was making bread. That was the common story about her. She was an old Polish lady. Of course, she was a great
friend of my dad's because he was one of her best customers.
When the kids my age started thinking we'd like to have a few drinks
once in awhile at our parties, I was always delegated to go to make the purchase because this lady knew me. Of course,
she also knew my dad, and if I bought a bottle, my dad would know about it the next day. This didn't bother him, but
he didn't like me to smoke.
I remember one time we did some repair work on the floor in the shop. Our
grinding wheel was bolted to the wooden floor and the wheel vibrated too much, so we wanted to make it more solid.
Dad decided to cut a hole in the floor and put a cement base on it right down in the ground. In cutting the hole in the
floor, we found a large number of bottles of liquor under there. And they weren't my dad's. In fact, Dad was kind of
jealous because the cache belonged to one of his hired men. The building was set on cement blocks which left a space
under the floor. When a heavy rain came along, the bottles were washed away out of reach. This fellow's liquor
wasn't the straight alcohol like my dad had, but regular bootleg whiskey. I don't know where he got it, because that
wasn't sold in the area.
In about 1926, the Gas Company put in a natural gas pipeline through the
area. Dad did all the repair work on the equipment which was parked in a vacant
lot across the street from the shop. A man and his wife acted as caretakers there and lived in a trailer home in the
area where the equipment was parked. They liked my sister Dorothy who was about
six years old at that time and a cute little kid. She spent a lot of time there basking in the glory of all that
attention.
One time we were with a group of kids hiking outside of town. We
didn't know what else to do, so we'd gather four or five kids and go for a walk out in the country. We went out one
evening walking on a farm near town and where this pipeline went through, and found that a horse had gotten caught
because the earth was soft. This was in a horse pasture and the horse had sunk clear down to its shoulder and
became trapped. They were trying to work this poor thing out of there. They fastened another horse to it and tried
to move it, but couldn't. I suggested that they go to town and get the caretaker with a winch tractor that was used to
lift the pipes and try to lift the horse out. So they did that, and they finally got the horse out, but in the meantime,
they had broken the horse's leg in trying to get him out sideways. That was messy and not a very nice experience. The
horse had to be destroyed.
y brother Ed
bought us a Shetland pony when he was through the university and working. He was very thoughtful about the family. However,
he didn't know very much about animals at the time. This pony was extremely old and just about ready to die when we got it.
We actually kept the pony in the cow barn, and there was a cement floor in there. A horse can't stand on cement, you have
to have wooden floors or ground. Of course, the pony immediately got arthritis and they had to do away with it. One of
my worst memories is when they killed that pony. They just dragged it away and there was blood all over. That was just
horrible for me. I felt so bad about that.
Later, my dad had a customer who owed him money who raised ponies, and he
got a pony for me. But by that time I was really too big for a pony. I was a big kid at twelve or thirteen years old. I'd
try to ride it and my legs would touch the ground. This pony was a stallion. We used to keep him on a stake out in the
vacant lot across the street from the shop. Mares would come down the street and he would pull out the stake and run after
these mares. It was quite a comical sight because he was very small and these horses were very big. He was always a real
frisky little animal and hard to handle.
I wasn't able to ride him, but I made a sulky for him to pull. My dad
always had a lot of buggies and wagons around the shop that were brought in for repairs, and some were junk, just sitting
around for parts. So I took a front axle with a shaft on it from one of the buggies and made a two wheel cart out of it.
We had an old baby buggy that had a seat and I took the seat from there and put it on the cart. Then I hitched the pony
to the cart to haul me around. I was quite innovative and used to do things like that. When I wanted something, I made it.
We had a dog called Bess. I remember when we got her she was just a little
pup. She was probably the cutest dog we ever owned and she was very smart. We trained her to retrieve right away because
my dad was a hunter. She was a water spaniel, and homely as heck because of the
shaggy fur that used to get matted up, but the most lovable creature you ever saw. Everybody in town knew Bess and liked
her. She was almost a town pet. In those days you didn't coop dogs up, they roamed around. She was a brown dog with shaggy
hair. I used to cut the mat out of her hair once in awhile which didn't improve her looks, but I hated that matted hair.
She was a real pest when it came to retrieving. When she grew older, she liked to hang out in the blacksmith shop
and the customers would throw stuff for her and she would retrieve. She kept pestering people by bringing a piece of wood
or something and dropping it at their feet to throw. If they didn't throw it right away, she'd scratch their foot and
sit back and look at them. She'd retrieve just as long as anyone would throw it.
There is another tale about that dog. She loved the car. We had a Model T
Ford and anytime we got near that car she was always there to jump up on the fender. It had a luggage carrier on the driver's
side and she'd jump into that, and the faster you'd go, the farther out on the fender she'd get, with her nose to the wind.
She loved to ride.
One time we locked her in the barn because we didn't want her along, and
my dad and I went out fishing. The lake was about five miles out of town. Mother
let the dog out fifteen or twenty minutes after we left, and when we were half way to the lake, we saw the dog come running
after the car. She followed us out, and even followed us in the lake. Dad wasn't going to let her in the boat, so she swam
behind it. Finally he relented and we took her in the boat with us. That was the kind of dog she was, you just couldn't
help but love her.
I used to sleep out on the front porch of the house when it was real hot in
the summertime. I'd just take the mattress off my bed and bring it down and put it on the porch. One night the dog was
barking and the town drunk had come along. He was a fellow who lived out in the country and he was walking home. The
dog was barking at him, and he knew her, of course. First he said, "Shush, Bessie, shush!" and she kept barking, and he
said it again a few times, then finally, I heard, "Goddammit, Bessie, shut up!"
People were around animals more than they are today. Even when you didn't live
on a farm, you kept animals. We had five cows that we kept in the barn in back of our house. We pastured them on the
edge of town and went morning and night to milk them. Telling about the cows we had reminds me of another sad story about
our cows which was very upsetting to me. I was driving them back to pasture after milking and it was my job to take care
of them. (I think each one of us as we came along, got our chance to work with them.) On the way back to pasture, they
had to go across a railroad track and that night a train was coming. I tried to hurry the cows through, but they just wouldn't
move. They kept their slow pace and finally the train was coming and one of the cows was on the track. I backed off because
I couldn't do anything and I was afraid, and the train hit the cow. I remember it rolling ahead of the train. That was one
of my worst experiences. I came back to the house crying, and Dad said as long as I wasn't hurt, it was no problem. He
wasn't worried about the cow. But I felt real bad about that for awhile.
In the wintertime, the cows were in a barn all the time. It was my job to
clean the barn for them and put down fresh straw every day, and go into the hay mow and put down hay for them.
 was sick every winter, as I said before, and
that set me back in school. I had to repeat the first grade because I missed so much time. So I was behind a year, and I
graduated at nineteen. When I was about thirteen years old, I developed a mastoid infection and I was very sick, and at
times delirious. I didn't know it then, but it was determined later that I had scarlet fever. Scarlet fever is often
accompanied by a mastoid problem. This became fairly advanced before my folks did anything about it. They took me to
Rochester eventually where I was operated on. I was so sick they didn't expect me to live. I recovered, but I was left
weak and with health problems the rest of my life -- headaches, colds and eventually heart ailments. I lost a half year
of school at the time of that illness. I managed to make that up with the assistance of some of my teachers who must have
realized how sick I had been and they helped me along.
I think it was when I was in the hospital for that operation that my
brother George sent me $5. He was very generous and after he left home and started
working, he was always sending money home to us kids. He had been a real good brother. At that time $5 was like $500 today.
To me, that was the greatest thing, and I'll never forget it. I got out of the hospital and I remember I spent a lot of
it on bananas. Fruit was a great luxury but the local grocery store had a special of 5 pounds for 25 cents. I
remember sitting on the curb outside the store consuming bananas.
Colds are something that have plagued me all my life. I always had
sickness every winter, and I always remember being cold. That's one of the reasons I now live in Arizona in the winter.
I remember when my son Dick was two or three years old, we had the doctor out because
he was sick with bad tonsils. I asked the doctor if this was starting with him, just like it had always been with me.
I said, "What in the heck is wrong with us that we should be having this trouble with sickness every winter?" I was twenty-nine
at the time. He said, "Well, you should have your tonsils out." So Dick and I both went to the hospital about the same
time and had our tonsils out. It helped me somewhat, and I wasn't as bad as I had been before. But even to this day, I'm
still cold when other people are warm. When they're complaining of the heat, I'm comfortable.
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